Remembering Nick

Javier Galvan, Director of the Instituto Cervantes, invited me last month to a seminar celebrating Nick Joaquin. It was postponed due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

This is what I wrote:

I first met Nick maybe in 1947 or thereabouts. I was then with the Varsitarian, the college paper of the University of Santo Tomas, but I was already contributing short stories to the weekly magazines, The Evening News Saturday magazine was edited by NVM Gonzales and it had office at the Ramon Roces complex in Soler Street, a block away from Rizal Avenue where Nick worked in the Philippines Free Press, a building away from the Evening News. I went there to meet him and pay him homage. I had read his short story, The Legend of the Dying Wanton, set in the naval battle in Lepanto. It blew me down. He was at his desk and I introduced myself; he looked at me, smiled, grunted, and then went back to his writing.

I joined the Manila Times in 1949; our office was at Florentino Street, together with the major newspapers, the Evening News, Bulletin, the Daily Mirror, and the wire services. The Chronicle was walking distance in Dasmarinas and journalists knew every one because we met in those tiny coffee shops in the area, or saw one another in the bookshops, in Avenida, Alemars, and National Book Store and further down in Doroteo Jose, Joaquin Po’s Popular Bookstore.

In 1955, both Nick and I were in the United States on fellowships. I was in Washington and he was in New York. On Fridays, I took the bus to New York and met him at his hotel on 42nd Street. We spent the days usually just walking around the big city or seeing the movies. Sometimes, I slept in his room or in one of the all night movie houses, then I took the bus back to Washington. What I remember of Nick in those days was his capacity for very keen observations. I remember we saw a movie and one of the characters carried a doll. That, he said, is a symbol of her childhood.

When I returned to Manila in 1964 and set up the bookshop, Nick was a frequent visitor.

He was closer to my wife than he was to me. My wife arranged interviews for him, and the bookshop became his mail drop. He couldnt’s say no to her. There was no week that Nick didn’t drop by, either at the bookshop or in our art gallery which we set up from 1967 to 1977. He liked his food, and of course, his beer, for which reason, there was always beer in the shop. On those occasions that we had something special, like cheese, my wife always sent some to him at his house in San Juan. I was there only once. It was a very simple house, and without air-conditioning.

As a journalist, Nick was superb. He brought out aspects of the personalities that were not only interesting but also very probing. He did a cover story on my wife’s uncle, Monsignor Jose Jovellanos, who was the parish priest of Tondo. I was awed by it and I got to appreciate Monsignor Jovellanos more.

Nick had very strong opinions and was a Hispanophile. He said all the good things in the country came from Spain. Once he said, if the Spaniards did not come, I would be Igorot, and I told him, and maybe it would have been better not just for me but for the country. I reminded him that the Chinese were in the islands centuries before the Europeans came.

Our conversations often turned very heated. Nick knew a lot of history, he had read the classics, and he knew Latin and Spanish, too.

We agreed on Don Quixote being the world’s greatest novel, and both of us worshipped Rizal. I always shut him up when he raised Spain to the sky, with this remark, “do not forget the Spaniards killed Rizal.”

We disagreed on Ulysses, Jose Garcia Villa, and on Arguilla. I learned a lot about history and the classical western tradition from Nick, and I think, he learned a lot about Southeast Asia, the Philippines and rural life from me. We reminisced a lot about pre-war Manila, and yes, of Intramuros most of all, which both of us knew.

He was very devoted to his job, but there came a time when he broke with Teddy Locsin, the publisher and the editor of the Free Press. Teddy and his young son, Teddy Boy, were also frequent visitors at the shop. I knew they were no longer talking with each other. At one time, however, when Nick was with me upstairs, I was able to get Teddy to come up. They greeted each other quite amiably and shook hands, but I do not think the rift was ever bridged.

Nick hated the Marcoses and our former friends who collaborated with them. At one time, he was at the shop, and one of the Marcos acolytes was coming up the stairs. He shoved him – but fortunately, he didn’t fall.

Nick experienced the ghost in the bookshop four times, the last two in my presence.

Close to his last days, he told my wife he wanted to meet the young writers. He was going to bring lechon for the occasion. And so they came but he stayed briefly with them. On the way out, I said, you have not really met them or talked with them, and he said, they are all so young, and I am already very old.

I was attending a workshop in Baguio when the news that Nick had died reached me. I only remember a few incidents when I really cried – this and when my mother and father-in-law died. I miss him, the most decent Filipino writer.

Towards the later part of his life, Nick was no longer too careful about the biographies he wrote. He featured in his magazine a politician widely criticized for his corruption. I told him if he no longer valued his byline, I still did. He glared at Andres Cristobal Cruz, his agent.

With his reportage, he elevated journalism to a higher level. He also wrote our history in a manner that most historians could not.

His “Question of Heroes” probed deeply into the characters of our heroes, thereby explaining their decisions.

With his brilliant body of work, Nick is the first Filipino who can stand side by side with the world’s greatest.